Question: Since there are people that are born intersex, experience gender dysphoria, or identify as transgender, does this invalidate the Latter-day Saint doctrine of eternal gender?

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Question: Since there are people that are born intersex, experience gender dysphoria, or identify as transgender, does this invalidate the Latter-day Saint ("Mormon") doctrine of eternal male and/or female gender?

This is one of the effects of the Fall and aberrational to the human species in general

Some secularist critics of the Church have pointed to the existence of intersex humans, experience gender dysphoria, or identify as transgender in order to invalidate the doctrine of eternal gender. Intersex people are defined as those that:

are born with any of several variations in sex characteristics including chromosomes, gonads, sex hormones, or genitals that, according to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit the typical definitions for male or female bodies"

Transgender people are those that identify with, dress as, and/or have gender-reassignment surgeries performed on them to become, identify with, and or act as a different gender than the one they were proclaimed to be at birth.

Gender dysphoria is the dissonance caused by not identifying with the gender that one is proclaimed to be apart of at birth.

It is claimed that this invalidates the doctrine of gender as outlined by "The Family: A Proclamation to the World":

All human beings—male and female—are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each has a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.

It should be noted here that "gender" is used synonymously with "biological sex". There are many scriptures that bear the doctrine of male and female spirits (only) out as well (see also Genesis 1:26; Mosiah 7:27, Ether 3:15, Doctrine 20:18, Moses 1:6; 2:26, 6:9, Abraham 4:26). To be sure, transgender identity could potentially be reconciled if we were focusing on statements such as merely "gender is eternal". What these critics then have to explain, though, is the creation of male and female only in the Garden of Eden, the heavenly ideal in a Father and Mother in Heaven, and so forth.

It should be first noted that those who make this argument commit the naturalistic fallacy in logic. Just because it occurs in nature, that does not, by necessity, make the phenomenon the inherent ideal. The Fall brought a lot of effects that we are to overcome. Thorns, thistles. and noxious weeds now become part of our nature (Moses 4:24). Nature is now inherently orderly and chaotic. To those parts of nature that are chaotic, God has revealed a proper order--an ideal that contrasts what we find in nature. This is what we find in the doctrine of gender.

Those that are secularists or progressive members are trying to show that the existence of these people in nature disproves a religious doctrine. Yet the doctrine itself is not based on nature, but of a belief in God and what he has mandated through divine revelation.

However, that does not mean that we can't provide any defense of the doctrine from nature. Indeed it is true that there is a significant majority of people that are not born intersex or transgender. Current numbers of people born intersex are estimated at 1.7% of the world's population.. This is aberrational compared to the majority of people that are not born this way. This, however, should not be taken as any sort of endorsement for the treatment of such individuals as aberrational.

In summary the argument:

1. Is based on the naturalistic fallacy and...
2. Is based on an arbitrary epistemological assumption. In other words, one chooses what source of knowledge to place moral authority.

FairMormon joins The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in unequivocally condemning the discrimination of any of God's children based upon gender, race, sexual identity and/or orientation, religious affiliation, etc..

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